and many more benefits!

Find us on Facebook

GMAT Club Timer Informer

Hi GMATClubber!

Thank you for using the timer!
We noticed you are actually not timing your practice. Click the START button first next time you use the timer.
There are many benefits to timing your practice, including:

Hide Tags

Show Tags

04 Feb 2017, 00:01

5

This post receivedKUDOS

Top Contributor

9

This post wasBOOKMARKED

00:00

A

B

C

D

E

Difficulty:

(N/A)

Question Stats:

0%(00:00) correct 0%(00:00) wrong based on 1 sessions

HideShow timer Statistics

Many times we know that had we been avid readers before we would never had this much difficulty in reading. Im personally one of those people who always hated reading comprehension passages and who were lazy to read even fiction novels. This is a small initiative by me to initiate reading for non readers in-order to improve it. I believe understanding a text if you have proper knowledge of the language is different from just reading it.

Hence I'm curious to know if we can take up individual articles from magazines or novels and discuss it GMAT RC way i.e., main point, paragraph summary, scope, tone etc.

Also we can accumulate difficult phrases and indirect constructions, which are difficult to be perceived directly by readers who are not very affluent with the language.

We can also have book reviews going forward(only for reading purpose and not to endorse any book in particular.)

Para7: Government needs to be really careful to tackle things. Better to go back to EU to avoid heavy toll since it is not really late to go back.

Summary: Effects of Brexit on Britain and a suggestion to go back.

Terminology:

1. The pound sterling (symbol: £; GBP [Great Britain Pound]), commonly known as the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom2. The Year to date change is a trading indicator that is usually used to calculate the percentage change of a stock's last closing price compared to the previous year close price.3. plumb the depths

1. to experience extreme sadness (usually + of ) His wife left him in May and during the following months he plumbed the depths of despair.2. if something that someone does or says plumbs the depths, it is very bad (often + of ) I read one review which said the show plumbed the depths of tastelessness.

4. manoeuvre: a movement or series of moves requiring skill and care.5. gilts: British government bonds; Guilt yield: withdrawing the money from them(I think so). So if pound goes down and everyone sell means that bond market players are demanding a higher interest rate for lending money to the UK government - so ordinary people are ultimately responsible for paying that bill.
_________________

The only time you can lose is when you give up. Try hard and you will suceed.Thanks = Kudos. Kudos are appreciated

Show Tags

HOW young is too young? Rich democracies give different answers, depending on the context: in New Jersey you can buy alcohol at 21 and cigarettes at 19, join the army at 17, have sex at 16 and be tried in court as an adult at 14. Such thresholds vary wildly from place to place. Belgian youngsters can get sozzled legally at 16. But on one thing most agree: only when you have turned 18 can you vote. When campaigners suggest lowering the voting age, the riposte is that 16- and 17-year-olds are too immature. This misses the real danger: that growing numbers of young people may not vote at all.The trend across the West is disturbing (see article). Turnout of American voters under 25 at presidential elections fell from 50% in 1972 to 38% in 2012; among over-65s it rose from 64% to 70% (data for the 2016 election are not yet available). For congressional races, the under-25 vote was a dire 17% in 2014. A similar pattern is repeated across the rich world.Young people’s disenchantment with the ballot box matters because voting is a habit: those who do not take to it young may never start. That could lead to ever-lower participation rates in decades to come, draining the legitimacy of governments in a vicious spiral in which poor turnout feeds scepticism towards democracy, and vice versa.

The disillusionment has many causes. The young tend to see voting as a choice rather than a duty (or, indeed, a privilege). The politically active tend to campaign on single issues rather than for a particular party. Politicians increasingly woo older voters—not only because they are more likely to vote but also because they make up a growing share of the electorate. Many young people see elections stacked against them. It is no surprise, then, that many of them turn away from voting.Some countries make voting compulsory, which increases turnout rates. But that does not deal with the underlying disillusionment. Governments need to find ways to rekindle the passion, rather than continue to ignore its absence. A good step would be to lower the voting age to 16, ensuring that new voters get off to the best possible start.

This would be no arbitrary change. The usual threshold of 18 means that young people’s first chance to vote often coincides with finishing compulsory education and leaving home. Away from their parents, they have no established voters to emulate and little connection to their new communities. As they move around, they may remain off the electoral roll. Sixteen-year-olds, by contrast, can easily be added to it and introduced to civic life at home and school. They can pick up the voting habit by accompanying their parents to polling stations. In Scotland, where 16- and 17-year-olds were eligible to vote in the independence referendum in 2014, an impressive three-quarters of those who registered turned out on the day, compared with 54% of 18- to 24-year-olds. In 2007 Austria became the only rich country where 16-year-olds could vote in all elections. Encouragingly, turnout rates for under-18s are markedly higher than for 19- to 25-year-olds.

Merely lowering the voting age is not enough, however. Youth participation in Scotland might have been still higher if more schools had helped register pupils. Governments also need to work harder at keeping electoral rolls current. Some are experimenting with automatic updates whenever a citizen notifies a public body of a change of address. Civics lessons can be improved. Courses that promote open debate and give pupils a vote in aspects of their school lives are more likely to boost political commitment later in life than those that present dry facts about the mechanics of government.

A lower voting age would strengthen the voice of the young and signal that their opinions matter. It is they, after all, who will bear the brunt of climate change and service the debt that paid for benefits, such as pensions and health care, of today’s elderly. Voting at 16 would make it easier to initiate new citizens in civic life. Above all, it would help guarantee the supply of young voters needed to preserve the vitality of democracy. Catch them early, and they will grow into better citizens.

_________________

The only time you can lose is when you give up. Try hard and you will suceed.Thanks = Kudos. Kudos are appreciated

Show Tags

09 Feb 2017, 00:57

Top Contributor

1

This post wasBOOKMARKED

Scope: Young voters are becoming disillusioned with elections. Catch them early and teach them the value of democracy

Para1: Introduces why voting age needs to be lowered. its effects otherwise.Para2: Young people turning away from voting is to be reduced. One method to do so is by reducing age so that they get habituated to voting as early as possible.Para3: Explains how turnout rates for under-18s are markedly higher than for others.Para4: Lowering the voting age is not enough; External influence needed. (ex schools, govt.etc)Para5: Reason why lowering age will benefit them by raising their importance.
_________________

The only time you can lose is when you give up. Try hard and you will suceed.Thanks = Kudos. Kudos are appreciated

Para1: Announcement of Mosul freedom from jihadistsPara2: Initiation of the military operationPara3: More details into the operation. Temporary Retreat.Para4: Too early to predict the resultPara5: More plans and forces collection on the wayPara6: Shia forces are keen to help but only secure specific part of the land by blocking IS fighters in SyriaPara7: Operation well planned in 3 phases. Phase 1: Supplies cut and escape blocked.Para8: Phase 2: Location trace-out and aim target from skiesPara9: Phase 3: Final phase i.e., handling remaining forces by police and other forces.Para10: result depends on how IS reacts. Fight or retreat. may fightPara11: Further thoughts on places for IS to retreat. Author Not confident regarding plans to capture IS.Para12: Future possibility of one more problem after current one ends unless politics is good.

Topics/Main point: Iraq’s second largest city will be freed from Islamic State. But at what cost, and with what result?

Scope: Details the plans but uncertain wrt future

Tone: Neutral but concerned
_________________

The only time you can lose is when you give up. Try hard and you will suceed.Thanks = Kudos. Kudos are appreciated

Show Tags

13 Feb 2017, 02:42

Top Contributor

Well this time I have decided to check an RC from Gmac paper tests. It would be great to have everyone's take and participation.

The impressionist painters expressly disavowed any interest in philosophy, yet their new approach to art had far-reaching philosophical implications. For the view of matter that the Impressionists assumed differed profoundly from the view that had previously prevailed among artists. This view helped to unify the artistic works created in the new style. The ancient Greeks had conceived of the world in concrete terms, even endowing abstract qualities with bodies. This Greek view of matter persisted, so far as painting was concerned, into the nineteenth century. The Impressionists, on the other hand, viewed light, not matter, as the ultimate visual reality. The philosopher Taine expressed the Impressionist view of things when he said, “The chief ‘person’ in a picture is the light in which everything is bathed.”

In Impressionist painting, solid bodies became mere reflectors of light, and distinctions between one object and another became arbitrary conventions; for by light all things were welded together. The treatment of both color and outline was transformed as well. Color, formerly considered a property inherent in an object, was seen to be merely the result of vibrations of light on the object’s colorless surface. And outline, whose function had formerly been to indicate the limits of objects, now marked instead merely the boundary between units of pattern, which often merged into one another.

The Impressionist world was composed not of separate objects but of many surfaces on which light struck and was reflected with varying intensity to the eye through the atmosphere, which modified it. It was this process that produced the mosaic of colors that formed an Impressionist canvas. “Light becomes the sole subject of the picture,” writes Mauclair. “The interest of the object upon which it plays is secondary. Painting thus conceived becomes a purely optic art.”

From this profoundly revolutionary form of art, then, all ideas—religious, moral, psychological—were excluded, and so were all emotions except certain aesthetic ones. The people, places, and things depicted in an Impressionist picture do not tell story or convey any special meaning; they are, instead, merely parts of pattern of light drawn from nature and captured on canvas by the artist.

Topic: Revolutionary light philosophy by impressionist painters

Para1: The impressionist painters said that they don't have any interest in philosophy but their new approach to art seems otherwise (related to philosophy). old view: abstract new: light

Para2: light philosophy: explains color and boundaries of objects

Para3: Contd......painting...purely optic art

Para4: all ideas and all emotions were excluded except certain aesthetic ones

Scope: How light theory defines the paintings and how is it different from traditional abstract view of Greeks._________________

The only time you can lose is when you give up. Try hard and you will suceed.Thanks = Kudos. Kudos are appreciated

Para1: Introducing topic over tax on robots inorder to reduce automation by bill gatesPara2: Author durther explains whats the view of gates behind his proposal.Para3: Explains possible pros of taxing robotsPara4: Otherwise reality is complex. Result may not worth it. Author mentions examples to explain.Para5: Big problem to gates proposal: automation is already slow and further delay can be dangerous.Para6: Measures in case of faster automation.Para7: cons of automation : incomes of people face pressuresPara8: Working paper comments that firms make large profits over declining labourPara9: Concludes that Robots can be easily blamed but both workers and machines lose similarly.
_________________

The only time you can lose is when you give up. Try hard and you will suceed.Thanks = Kudos. Kudos are appreciated

Para1: Introducing topic over how china is trying to use Shakespeare for its own benefit. All that seems is not completely true wrt Shakespeare-themed celebrations.Para2: Comparison between tang and Shakespeare .Para3: A common narrative weaved around their meeting which never took placePara4: adulation of Tang carries onPara5: details about Shakespeare popularity with the china growing engagement with the WestPara6: China will continue to try to popularize tang.
_________________

The only time you can lose is when you give up. Try hard and you will suceed.Thanks = Kudos. Kudos are appreciated

Show Tags

LaGuardia smells like a used car filled with old Cinnabon bags. It’s New York’s second-busiest airport (behind John F. Kennedy International), and yet there’s no convenient way to get there by mass transit. The floors are scuffed. The carpets are stained. Some of the bathroom stalls don’t have working locks. Just this month, a runway was struck by lightning, and brown water poured out of a ceiling. Each year it serves about 28 million people through a hodgepodge of terminals that seem to be perpetually under construction. During a 2015 speech about infrastructure, then-Vice President Joe Biden told a Philadelphia audience, “If I blindfolded you and took you to LaGuardia Airport in New York, you must think, I must be in some Third World country.” People laughed. “I’m not joking,” Biden said. People laughed some more. I don’t know why, though. LaGuardia is my favorite airport.

I want one thing from an airport: to get me to my gate as quickly as possible. LaGuardia, dilapidated hellhole that it is, is pretty good for this. “I can get to the airport 41 minutes before my flight and be fine. That’s impossible at most big-city airports,” says Brian Kelly, founder of the Points Guy website, which offers money- and time-saving air travel tips. Kelly’s good fortune is a result of those terminals, which spread out fliers instead of funneling them through a central departure point.

Unfortunately, all this is changing. Last year, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the airport, began an estimated $8 billion renovation that will tear down LaGuardia’s terminals and replace them with a central hub. There’s $450 million earmarked to beef up public transportation access, which would be especially helpful right now: Traffic has been so awful since the renovation began—particularly when the weather is bad—that some travelers have gotten out of taxis in the middle of the highway because that’s as close as they could get to the airport. Nothing, however, is being done to address LaGuardia’s measly two runways, the primary cause of flight delays so frequent that they helped lead Kelly to rate the airport America’s worst in a list he compiled last November.

Instead, LaGuardia will get upscale shops and eateries for travelers to check out while they wait and wait. I guess this was inevitable: There’s already a Korean barbecue truck at Los Angeles International and a bakery that makes sourdough in adorable animal shapes at San Francisco International. Most airports are owned by cities or municipal governments, and they’re rewarded financially by leasing gates to airlines and retail space to restaurants and stores. When airlines co-fund terminals, as Delta Inc. is doing at LaGuardia, they can reap some of the rental profit. Fancy terminals beget fancy retailers, who pay higher rent. It’s hard to persuade Bulgari to move into an airport without locks on every bathroom stall.

In 2008, JetBlue Airways Corp. paid $743 million for its swanky terminal at JFK, which includes what the New York Times described as a “rustic Italian trattoria” operated by a former chef at Del Posto, a top New York spot. But I don’t want to eat at a rustic trattoria when I’m at the airport. I don’t want to walk for 30 minutes while carrying two unnecessarily heavy carry-on bags (adding the weight to my checked luggage would cost $150) past Thomas Pink and Swarovski stores, because Delta’s new $1.3 billion JFK terminal has been laid out in one straight, mile-long line. I don’t want my airport to be, as London’s Heathrow Terminal 2 architect Luis Vidal once described his $4 billion renovation plan, “a gathering place.” I don’t want to gather. I want to fly somewhere and do my gathering there. Sparkly jewelry won’t distract me from longer security lines and flight delays, no matter how hard the airline-airport industrial complex tries.

_________________

The only time you can lose is when you give up. Try hard and you will suceed.Thanks = Kudos. Kudos are appreciated

Show Tags

14 Mar 2017, 10:46

Top Contributor

Para1: The author introduces the dilapidated condition Laguardia airport.Para2: Author expresses his reason behind liking for the airport.Para3: change in scenario in the name of renovation which worsened the aspectsPara4: unnecessary developments instead of addressing serious issuesPara5: Final reason by author of why the airport is no longer his favorite.

Topic: America’s Worst Airport

Tone: Concerned
_________________

The only time you can lose is when you give up. Try hard and you will suceed.Thanks = Kudos. Kudos are appreciated